3 Bits? That’s Not Binary!

Intel and Microm have just teamed up to work on a 3 bit-per-cell flash drive! now we can store 50 % more data on a flash drive the same size. Now an 8Gb can be the same size as a 12GB. Before I get into this, I will explain how a regular flash drive works. Any flash drive (or SSD) you find has cells. A 1GB flash drive has 4294967296 cells in it. Each cell can store 2 bits of data in it, effectively making the number of cells half the number of stored bits. Each cell can be either a 1 or an 0. The computer can read this, as even numbers are binary-compatible. See the problem?

A computer would have to read a 3bpc flash drive 2 cells at a time to be able to read the contents. That makes it unstable. I’d be interested to see how the mathematicians worked it out. Why didn’t they jump to 4bpc? Why not hexadecimal (0123456789abcde)? What is the 3rd bit?